wilkes

The firewall is between the cable modem and the router, if that is what you were asking. The smoothwall acts as a DHCP server so that function is cut off on the Linksys router. There is no cable plugged into the WAN or Internet jack on the router.

rkba,

I run a Linux Fedora Core box on my network, which is the end point for ports 21 (ftp), 22 (ssh), 25 (smtp), and others. I don't monitor for port scans, but I do watch for connection attempts. I find that one to two times a day someone attempts a brute force attack.

For the most part, a Linksys router will keep you safe. As long as you aren't using port forwarding or DMZ, you won't receive any unsolicited packets. I assume that you put the firewall on DMZ, so that it receives everything that hits the router. A linksys, or similar router combined with zone alarm or norton's firewall is more than adequate for most home useage.

A trojan can only affect you if you have already loaded the "client" portion onto your computer. Exploits are what can be initiated from outside. Most of these require an open port or some sort of interaction.

Here is an interesting article, you'll have to drill down a bit though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_background_noise

Firewall update: I have Smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org/) running on the old machine. Piece of cake, really - and I know little about networking. My home network is really simple, consisting of a cable modem, the Smoothwall, a Linksys wireless router, one wired computer and one wireless computer.

I enabled the web proxy server so that my Internet access might be accelerated a little.

The only gotcha I ran into was that the Smoothwall kernel (Linux) didn't recogize my USB keyboard so I had to spend $15 for a PS/2 model.

It is amazing to look at the logs and see the number of people scanning for open ports. A lot of these nuts are in Korea, China, and Japan.

I'm not running a software firewall at the moment. My feeling is that a serious Trojan attack would probably defeat the Windows or Zone Alarm firewalls first thing anyway. They might be helpful in identifying spyware, but I scan for that already.

Just two, in my house. But it may be a matter of either getting some use out of it or storing it. Can't sell it since it doesn't belong to me and no one else in the company wants it.

I guess I'll have to buy another NIC for it since there is only one ethernet port/

My opinion, that is a pretty "stout" machine to use as a dedicated hardware firewall. How many PC's will be attached to said firewall?

thanks

RKBA, just paste the link itself, and the program recognizes it. Don't use tags, just put the link.

http://www.smoothwall.org

I just checked by code and it looks right. Are "a" tags parsed incorrectly here?

Try again: http://www.google.com">google

My boss just let me order a new computer - with an Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor and 2GB of RAM. Hoooo boy.

I was due for one though. My old box has a P4 1.5Ghz, 512MB RAM. Good enough for a lot of things, but not for running Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Outlook simultaneously.

Does anyone have any experience turning an older PC into a hardware firewall, esp. using http://www.smoothwall.org/">Smoothwall?